Sunday, May 31, 2015

The
Christian faith is very inconvenient. We
insist upon saying that our God is the only true God, and that “whoever desires
to be saved” must “worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity.” And whoever does not believe this faith “faithfully
and firmly cannot be saved.”

Our
Athanasian Creed has something in it to offend just about everybody.

And
in case you missed all the beheadings of Christian men, women, and children in
the last few years, we’re hated around the world, and not just by Muslims. Totalitarian states of every kind revel in violence
against Christianity. And while no-one
is beheading Christians in our own country, we are being targeted as bigots, homophobes,
insensitive, hypocrites, and – just as we were called in the days of the
persecutions of the Roman Empire, we are today labelled as “haters.” Our people are being fined huge amounts by
extrajudicial tribunals – right here in the United States – for refusing to
violate their consciences, even as supposedly conservative governors throw our
religious liberties under the bus.

Dear
friends, this may come as a shock to you, but we Christians are not liked in our
society. We insist on being different. We insist on being exclusive. We insist that Jesus be our top priority in
life, and that there is no other way to be saved but through Him. And in our society, this is heresy.

For
as the church confesses, and as Scripture testifies, Jesus is both God and Man.
The Father is God, and the Holy Spirit
is God, and neither of them is a Man. There
are three distinct persons who are clearly called “God” and “Lord” in our Holy
Scriptures, even as God is not three Gods, but one God.

Our
Lord Jesus Christ even went so far as to say, “I am the… truth.” At the Lord’s trial, Pilate asked Jesus, “What
is truth?” Our Lord answered Pilate with
His silence. Pilate was looking truth in
the divine face, and allowed truth to be crucified and put to death. Today, most people scoff at the idea that
there is a single truth.

And
according to our doctrine of the Trinity, Pilate allowed God to be murdered. For in the Christian faith, God can die,
because God is a Man. And God does indeed
die on the cross. And who kills God? Sinful men from every walk of life. The government killed God. Ambitious men killed God. Ordinary soldiers killed God. Religious people killed God. Priests and Scribes and Pharisees killed God. Ordinary Jews in the mob killed God. And in fact, you killed God. I killed God. We all killed God, from Adam and Eve, right up
to those being born at this very moment. Our hands are stained with the blood of God,
dear friends.

There
is enough here to offend everyone. And
we are also offended, dear friends, because we poor, miserable sinners do not
like the truth and more than the rest of the world, comprised of sinful men, does.
It is a most inconvenient truth that God
is Triune, that God is Human, that God died, and that God’s creatures murdered
God. And the greatest marvel of all is
that God the Son foreknew this, and even planned to take human flesh and die a
sacrificial death for us. “Oh, the depth
of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!.... For who has known the mind
of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?”

The
world tells us this makes no sense. The
world tells us we must repent of our foolish faith. The world tells us to shut up and agree with
them that we are self-aware blobs of cells, that we have no purpose, and that
our highest good is to do what’s best for us alone. But because we don’t submit to them, the world
would like to kill us even as the world conspired to kill our God and Lord on
the cross. The world does not understand
love, sacrifice, or atonement. The world
does not understand sin, or why death happens. The world certainly doesn’t understand Jesus
or the meaning of His death.

Not
even Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel, understood who Jesus is and why He came
into the world. But to his credit, Nicodemus
did come to Jesus in order to understand. Jesus explained to him: “No one has ascended
into heaven except He who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” And the Lord Jesus Christ revealed the great
and glorious gospel to Nicodemus: “So must the Son of Man we lifted up, that
whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.”

“For
God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him
should not perish but have eternal life.”

The
world should rejoice, brothers and sisters, because this Gospel is actually not
exclusive, but rather inclusive of all who believe. The Gospel calls all people to repent of their
sins and believe the Good News, regardless of one’s sex or sexual desires. The Gospel calls all people to become part of
Christ’s bride, regardless of race, tribe, tongue, socio-economic status, or
politics. The Gospel affords no-one a
special privilege, but offers privilege as sons of God and heirs of eternal
life to all sinners who confess and are absolved, to all who call upon the name
of the Lord, to all who are baptized and who believe, to all those who
faithfully and firmly hold the catholic faith.

“For
God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that
the world might be saved through Him.”

Because
of who He is, we bow before our Triune God, dear friends, in humble and yet
joyful worship. And we can indeed love
God because He first loved us: by creating us in the garden of Eden, by
redeeming us at the cross, and by sanctifying us in our very flesh where He
comes to us. We join the prophet Isaiah
in the Most Holy Place, singing, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth!” And even though we are men of unclean lips,
the Lord uses His servants to place a cleansing coal upon our lips, even Christ’s
very body. And indeed, our “guilt is
taken away, and [our] sin atoned for!”

And,
dear friends, the God who died for us men and for our salvation, also rose
again, to defeat death and the grave, to conquer sin and Satan, and to deliver
to us everlasting life. This is most
certainly true, most inconveniently true, most gloriously true,

The
Christian faith is most inconvenient, dear friends, and thanks be to God that
it is! For the object of this faith is
Christ Himself, God in the flesh, who breaks through sin, sorrow, and even the
ultimate enemy death itself, to deliver unto us forgiveness, faith, salvation,
and life that has no end!

For
we have been baptized, dear friends, not in the name of the world, not in the
name of a Unitary God, not in our own names, the name of our country, the name
of our accomplishments, and not in the name of the world’s heroes and idols. But rather, we have been baptized, set apart,
redeemed, and born again of water and the Spirit in that most inconvenient name,
that most glorious name…

In the name of the Father
and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Not
long after receiving a second chance after the flood, mankind blew it again. When told to repopulate the earth and spread
out, our ancestors decided to gather together, saying, “Come, let us build
ourselves a city yand a tower with its top in the heavens and let us make a name
for ourselves.”

Mankind
had discovered “technology” – in this case, bricks. This enabled him to build a skyscraper. And instead of obeying God’s will to
repopulate the globe, he decided to use technology and project management to
glorify himself.

But
the project would fail as God confused the languages. Reluctantly, man spread out and re-peopled
the planet, but at a terrible price: the confusion of languages resulted in
misunderstandings, divisions, wars and walls between races of people who were
in fact all sons of Noah.

In
the late 1800s AD, a son of Noah named Ludwig Zamenhof, a Polish Jew, felt the
effects of the curse of Babel. His own
small town had ethnic tensions, in part, because there were four languages
being spoken. This boy grew up to be an
eye doctor and a linguist. He created a
new language to fix the Babel problem. He
called it “Lingvo Internacia” – The International Language. It was intended to be a second language for
everybody. It was easy to learn, and
took off rapidly.

Being
Jewish, Dr. Zamenhof knew about the curse of Babel. And though he knew about the Garden of Eden
and the Fall, He did not confess Jesus nor the Holy Spirit. But he had hope that his language would be the
secret to world peace, and would undo the damage of Babel. He published his language under a pen name:
Dr. Esperanto. “Esperanto” means, in the
International Language: “one who hopes.”
The language itself became known as Esperanto. It is still spoken around the world.

Of
course, Dr. Zamenhof’s dream of a worldwide language and world peace didn’t
materialize.

But,
dear friends, we are not without hope. In
fact, we have a hope rooted in an ironclad promise. The hope for mankind and for true peace is not
found in one more human language, nor in fallen human words. Rather, our hope is in the Word, the eternal
Word, the Word of God, the Word made flesh: the same Word by whom all things
were made; the same Word that creates us, breathes the Spirit of Life into us,
redeems us from the effects of the fall into sin, cures us from death,
liberates us from the devil, and gives us everlasting life – all as a free gift
of love, given to us on the cross, received at the font, pulpit, and altar.

For
even if Dr. Zamenhof’s dream were to be fulfilled, and the whole world learned
to speak Esperanto, it would only bring us back to Babel. It would not cure the curse of sin that came
to us at the Fall.

To
be sure, understanding is a good thing. Learning one another’s languages is a good
thing. Esperanto is a remarkable language
and it is good to learn it for many reasons. But, dear friends, our hope is not to undo the
curse of Babel, but rather to be cured from the curse of sin. Our hope is not to get on with human
cooperation in order to pursue technology and make a name for ourselves, but
rather our hope is to return to our state of innocence and blessedness of the
Garden of Eden.

The
world doesn’t need to fix a symptom, but rather to be rid of the problem. And on the Day of Pentecost, God did more than
Esperanto could ever hope to do! For on
Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came and bridged the gap, not with words, but with
the Word, not with human hopes, but with a divine promise. On Pentecost, the Gospel was proclaimed across
languages, cultures, and peoples. For
the Church transcends all the divisions of Babel by a common hope, the hope
that is eternal, sure, and given to us by grace through faith. It is the hope of eternal healing and
transformation in Christ, through the Gospel, and by means of the Holy Spirit. We have this gift, dear friends, right here,
in this place of hope and healing and peace, in the preaching of the Word, in
your Holy Baptism, in the hearing of the divine words of forgiveness, and in
the sharing of Holy Communion.

The
languages that became our curse, have also become a blessing. For in these human languages, the Gospel is
preached. And through words comes the
Word. And in this sense, all human
languages – even Dr. Zamenhof’s “Lingvo Internacia” – actually do deliver hope.
Not in and of themselves, but in Christ
through the Holy Spirit who came to the Church at Pentecost.

The
Lord Jesus Christ has not left us as orphans, dear friends, ascending to the
heavens to leave us as sitting ducks here in an increasingly hostile, violent, and satanic world, but
rather He has given us “another Helper, to be with [us] forever, even the
Spirit of Truth.” And according to the
Lord’s word and promise: “He dwells with you and will be in you.”

For
the ministry of the Holy Spirit empowers us, dear friends, for He is the “Lord
and giver of life.” “You know Him,” says
our Lord, “for He dwells with you and will be in you.” He dwells with you in faith from the moment of
your baptism. And He will indeed be with
you “forever” according to the Lord’s Spirit-bound Word and promise.

And
the Work of the Spirit is so much more than undoing the curse of Babel. Indeed, He undoes the curse of Eden. He restores paradise by His divine means of
delivering Christ to us, to the Church, the Holy Spirit’s creation. For He “has called me by the Gospel.” He has “enlightened me with His gifts.” He has “sanctified and kept me in the true
faith.”

Dear
friends, “in the same way, He calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies the
whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true
faith.”

Moreover,
the Holy Spirit “daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all
believers. On the Last Day He will raise
me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ.” This is what happened that first Pentecost,
and continues to happen in the life of every believer.

This,
dear friends, is a hope that transcends human language, that reaches past Babel
to Eden, that promises not just world peace, but eternal peace, divine peace,
the peace that passes all understanding. For within every Christian is an Esperanto, “one
who hopes,” hoping in Him who is the Word whose Word delivers peace. His Word is forgiveness. His Word is love. His Word is life. His Word is hope, the hope of Pentecost, the
hope of eternity! Thanks be to the Word,
to the Holy Spirit, and to the Father, now and even unto eternity! Amen.

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Our
Lord makes several promises in our Gospel. First, He promises the coming of the “Helper” –
that is, the Holy Spirit. Then He
promises that the Spirit will bear witness about Him, about Jesus. And then He promises that the disciples will
bear witness about Him, about Jesus as well.

It
must have been strange for the eleven apostles just after Jesus ascended, but
not yet Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit would come to them in the future. It must have been confusing, a calm before the
storm, not knowing what would happen, and yet having a promise from Jesus that
something huge was about to happen; it must have been a strange feeling.

Perhaps
this is why so many passages from the Old Testament are about waiting on the
Lord, being patient, and holding fast to the promises. For when it comes to promises, we either
believe them, and plan around them (even though they have not yet happened), or
we take a more skeptical stance, and adopt a wait-and-see attitude before committing
to anything.

Dear
friends, in our modern life – in both our secular life and in our church life –
this inability to commit is one of our greatest problems. Young people complain bitterly and often that
they would like to be married, but the people of the opposite sex in their
lives will not make a commitment.

How
often we start a project and not see it through to the end! How often we join a gym or a club and then
find excuses not to go! And how easy it
is to be baptized and confirmed, maybe even married in the church, or perhaps
serving on a board or committee – but then fall away from church attendance, from
bible class, from giving regular offerings, and eventually falling away from
the Christian life itself.

Church
membership is not a choice. It is not based
on feelings. Rather it is a commitment,
and it is based on promises: promises we make at our baptisms (and the baptisms
of our children), and at our confirmations.
We may make additional promises if we are married in the church or if we
are serving in some office. But even
more important, dear friends, is our Lord’s promises to us. For this is what motivates us to commit to Him
and to His bride: the gifts He promises us when we live in Him and He in us,
through the Holy Spirit, through the Gospel, through the sacraments, and
through communion with God and with one another.

When
we consider the Lord’s promise to us of forgiveness of all of our sins, of
victory over Satan and death, and of eternal life – committing to attend Divine
Service and Bible class, commitment to pray and give alms, commitment to the
Christian life in all that we say and do seven days a week is not a terrible burden,
but rather a response of gratitude and love.

The
disciples acted based on many promises from Jesus. They waited on the Lord. They followed Him and confessed His name in
good times and in bad times. His Word
empowered them, as Jesus told them, “to keep you from falling away.”

If
you want to stay in the faith and not fall away, if you want your children to
remain in the faith and not fall away, then listen to His Word, dear friends! “I have said all these things to you,” Jesus
said, dear brothers and sisters, “to keep you from falling away.”

Don’t
fall away because you are bored, don’t feel like coming to church, want to
spend money and time elsewhere, or because you think you know everything
already. Don’t tell me that you read
your bible at home. Nowhere in Scripture
does Jesus tell you to read your bible at home. It’s not bad to do it, of course, but not as a
substitute for joining your brothers and sisters in prayer and in the Word. He tells us to gather in His name. He tells us to pray not to “my Father,” but
to “our Father.” He tells us to “take
eat” and “take drink” and “do this in remembrance of Me.” It is a communion, because the life of faith
is lived out in community.

And,
dear friends, that means service and commitment. It does not mean showing up when you feel like
it. It does not mean putting a few bucks
in the plate every now and then. Our
Lord committed Himself to go the cross for us. Our Lord committed His Spirit to the
Father. Our Lord committed to sending
the Holy Spirit to us. Our Lord commits
to us today in His Word and Sacrament. This
promise is for you and for your children!

“I
have said all these things to keep you from falling away.”

Times
have changed, brothers and sisters. Once
more, it costs something to be a disciple of Jesus. “They will put you out of the synagogues,”
promises our Lord. “Indeed, the hour is
coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they
have not known the Father, nor Me.” We
live in a society that does not know Jesus, does not know the Father, does not
know the Scriptures, and doesn’t even know the basics of reality, such as what
a man is, what a woman is, what vice is, and what virtue is. And we Christians have once more become “Enemies
of the State” and “Enemies of the People” because we hold to the Word of God. If we want our children, our grandchildren,
our great-grandchildren to remain in this one true and saving faith, we have to
remain in the faith, dear friends. We
have to commit. The days of fair-weather
Christianity are over. We need to allow
God’s Word to have its way with us. The
time is now. And we need for our
children to experience the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives by contact
with Jesus: with the Word and the Sacraments, in the worship life of the
church, in committing to the support, financial and otherwise, of this parish.

“I
have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away.”

Our
Lord wants us in the faith because He wants us in eternity, in the new heavens
and the new earth, in a renewed paradise, in our resurrected bodies, in flesh
no longer held captive to sin and headed to death. He wants us because He loves us!

Dear
friends, listen to our Lord’s promises! Indeed,
He promises us the Holy Spirit. He
promises that we will be His witnesses.
He promises us His righteousness. He promises us His life that will have no end.
We can indeed commit to Him, dear
brothers and sisters, because He is committed to us, come what may. “I have said these things to you,” says our blessed
Lord, “that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you.” Thanks be to our Lord Jesus Christ, whose Word
is mighty and merciful! Thanks be to God! Amen.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Hison
the sickness of sinto the next - and d w liars and sons of the devil, tament, a
bloodye people on In the name of the
Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

Thursday, May 14, 2015

After
teaching the disciples for three years about His kingdom, after performing
miracles and changing the world, He submits to death on a cross. And then, He surprises them by rising from the
dead. He surprises them by appearing to
them for 40 days, continuing His ministry of teaching them. And then, on that Thursday six weeks
and four days after that first Easter, Jesus surprises the disciples again: by
ascending into Heaven, at the right hand of the Father, disappearing into the
sky.

But
He also surprised them by a promise before He ascended on high, in a similar
manner as did the prophet Elijah, blessing the disciples, like Elijah did to
Elisha: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you
will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends
of the earth.”

Great
surprises indeed! The world has never
been the same since!

For
the apostles – that is, the ones whom Jesus sent in His name, ordained under
His authority, called by the Holy Spirit – preached
the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake, and did so as our Lord
said, in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the very ends of the earth –
even as preachers are today sent far and near with this self-same good news of the
cross, of redemption, and of the reality, dear friends, that your sins are
forgiven, and that you have been baptized into Christ, and that you are called
by the law to repent, and that you are graced with the Gospel unto the certain promise
of the “resurrection of the body and the life everlasting”!

These
eleven apostles were transformed from cowering sheep into bold shepherds –
because of the Spirit that animated them, and by the Gospel that motivated
them. They were empowered by the same
Lord Jesus Christ who continued to appear to them under the forms of bread and
wine, even as He continues to come to us bodily today in this same Holy Supper,
dear friends.

Indeed,
Jesus is full of surprises!

On
that Thursday, our Lord went up out of their sight, but He did not abandon
them. No indeed! He continued to teach them through the Word. He continued to forgive them through
Absolution. He continued to comfort them
in their Baptism. He continued to
forgive and fortify them in the Eucharist. Our Lord had promised them, and us: “I am with
you always, to the end of the age.”

And
so He is!

But
being ascended, the disciples – and that title includes us, dear brothers and
sisters – could not simply sit idle and depend on our Lord to put His hand to
the plow. By ascending to the Father,
the Lord has delegated the management of the kingdom to us, to the church. He has given the pastors of the church the
authority to forgive sins, to preach the Gospel, and to administer the
sacraments. And like a baby bird getting
nudged out of the nest, the once-cowering disciples were to take up their
crosses, spread their wings, and become courageous martyrs, witnesses of our Lord,
indeed, in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth.

Our
Lord had told them: “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole
creation. Whoever believes and is
baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”

But
He doesn’t just tell the church to do these things alone. He doesn’t leave them powerless. For He says: “And these signs will accompany
those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new
tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any
deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick,
and they will recover.”

Dear
brothers and sisters, though we in the church appear weak – subject to tyrants and
mullahs and dictators and bullies and Supreme Court justices – in Christ, we
are strong. In the Spirit, we are
bold. In the Word and Sacraments, we are
redeemed and live forever. We exorcise
demons, we preach in languages that didn’t even exist when our Lord ascended, we
continue to strive against the evil serpent that beguiled Eve and intimidated
Adam, we handle the deadliest poison this world and its prince have to offer, and
yet we live. We preach a Gospel that
forgives sins and gives immortality to the mortal. And through it all, our Lord is still working:
working through His church, working through His ministers, working through His
Word, working through His sacraments.

Yes
indeed, Jesus never ceases to amaze and surprise!

And
yet, it seems at times like we have been abandoned. We cannot place our fingers in the hole of the
nails as did St. Thomas. We can’t
recline next to Him at table like St. John. We cannot hear Him call out our name like St. Mary.
Nor do we see Him bodily ascend as did
the Men of Galilee.

But
He does not abandon us, dear friends. He
is here with us, in body and in Word. He
is here with us even in His lifeblood, which was poured out for us, and which
is given to us, to restore our life and bolster our faith. In fact, dear friends, it is we who abandon
Him in our constant sinning: when we find something to do other than to receive
Him in the Sacrament at the Divine Service; when we spent time with the
television or radio instead of studying His Word; when we pursue a life of
entertainment in place of a life of prayer. We must repent, dear friends! Our Lord is calling us to a better way, and
He doesn’t leave us or forsake us! He
will be here, in space and time, where we dwell, here for us in Word and
Sacrament, until He returns in glory.

For
Jesus is not yet done with the surprises!

The
angel testified: “Man of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into
heaven, will come in the same way you saw Him go into heaven.”

Jesus
will surprise us with His coming again “with glory to judge both the living and
the dead, whose kingdom has no end.”

Hear,
O brothers and sisters! Hear the Word of
the Lord, the Good News that Jesus has atoned for your sins! Hear the good news that you have been baptized
into His name! Hear His call to repent,
and His declaration of absolution! Our
blessed Lord continues to give Himself to you, in His body and blood and in His
Word, unto forgiveness, life, and salvation, even as we await His coming again
in glory.

Jesus
continues to surprise His beloved people, with peace and forgiveness and joy
and renewal and life – now and even unto eternity! Amen.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Hison
the sickness of sinto the next - and d w liars and sons of the devil, tament, a
bloodye people on In the name of the
Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

In
our Gospel, our Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son, makes reference seven times to the
Father. It just so happens that today is
a secular holiday in which we honor our mothers. There doesn’t have to be a conflict between
the two. For motherhood and fatherhood
are closely related. You can’t have one
without the other.

The church father Cyprian said that you can’t have God as your Father without
having the church as your mother. Martin
Luther similarly said, “The Christian church is your mother, who gives birth to
you and bears you through the Word. And
this is done by the Holy Spirit who bears witness concerning Christ.”

So
just as every Christian has a heavenly Father, every Christian likewise has a
heavenly mother, the church. Our Lord
Jesus told us that we must be born again, and just as our earthly mothers
birthed us from their very bodies, amid blood and water and pain and joy, so
too are we given new life from the Body of Christ, amid the blood of the Lord’s
sacrifice given to us in the chalice, amid the water from the Lord’s side given
to us at the font, in the pain of the Lord’s passion and death and burial, and
the joy of the Lord’s resurrection – each one of us, dear friends, has found
the new birth, being born again, having a Father in heaven and a mother who
continues to nurture us all our lives in Word and Sacrament, in the Gospel, and
in the forgiveness of sins in Christ, given to each one of us, even as parents
provide for us in this body and life.

And
so it is fitting, dear friends, that we have yet again borne witness to the
miracle of Holy Baptism, even as our newest member, little Ethan, has been made
an adopted son of the Father and an adopted son of the Church. He has today joined the Holy Christian
Church, the communion of saints, and has been given a promise that the Lord
will never forsake Him, has named him as his very own child, has marked him
with the sign of the holy cross, and will love him unconditionally even unto
eternal life.

The
seed has been planted, it has been watered, and now it will grow according to
the Lord’s providence. Each member of
Ethan’s family has been called by God to bear witness of the Lord Jesus to him,
our dear brother in Christ: to pray for him, to teach him the Word of God, to
faithfully bring him to the Lord’s house, for worship, for instruction, and so
that he may be loved and nurtured by his brothers and sisters in Christ, his
church family.

And
as Ethan grows up in this faith, he himself may be called to become a father himself
to his own children, to bring them to the holy font to receive adoption as
children: of God our Father and the church our mother. For one of the benefits children have is to
petition their fathers for what they need. The Lord’s prayer is the prayer of a Son to a
loving Father, with seven remarkable requests to our Father who art in Heaven:
1) For His name to be kept holy among us, 2) that His kingdom may come to us,
3) that His will be done among us, 4) that we thankfully receive our daily
bread, 5) that our Father forgive us our sins, even as we forgive the sins of
others, 6) that the Father will help lead us through dark times in our lives,
times of temptation to “false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice,”
and 7) for rescue from the evil one.

Today,
this prayer has become Ethan’s prayer, even as it is our prayer, dear friends.

And
our Lord Jesus further promises: “Whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He
will give it to you.” Our Lord spoke in
figures of speech, but says, “the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to
you in figures of speech, but will tell you plainly about the Father.” Jesus tells us: “The Father Himself loves you.”

For
even in the corrupted and sinful human relationship of parents and children, we
imperfect parents and imperfect children catch a glimpse of what the love of
God truly is. And it is in our heavenly
Father that we see perfect love – even when we earthly mothers, earthly
fathers, and earthly children fall short of the ideal.

Ethan
is beginning his Christian life in perilous times. For the first time in hundreds of years,
Christians in western society face hatred, discrimination, and persecution. We are treated with scorn and contempt for
believing in the Bible. We are punished
for our refusal to allow the world to define our beliefs for us. Our Lord Jesus calls us to follow Him through it
all, by taking up our crosses, by laying down our lives if we are called to do
so, even as the Son laid down His life in obedience to the Father, and in love
for us, so that we could be redeemed from death and brought into that perfect
communion with our Father who art in heaven, even unto eternity.

Our
Lord says: “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

Jesus
came to bring us at last to our Father, to make us His children. Jesus has come to bring us to our mother the
church, a mother that loves us by raising us in godly fear and love of the
Father. In the nurture of the church, we
are not only birthed, but fed, comforted, loved, and given all that we need to
grow.

It
is not so politically correct these days to honor motherhood. The world treats mothers as second class
citizens. The world treats motherhood as
a necessary evil and as an impediment to chosen gender roles. Natural biology still mandates that there are
mothers and fathers, men and women, boys and girls. And we Christians still delight and glory in
the reality that the Lord has created us in His own image, male and female, and
that in this glorious created order, life goes on by means of parental love,
even as eternal life comes to us from our heavenly Father and churchly mother.

For
we are not alone. We have our heavenly
Father even amid the world’s tribulation and the assaults of the devil, the
world, and our sinful nature. We have
our baptism, which can never be taken away from us. We have brothers and sisters in Christ all
over the world, united in the Father’s love, the Son’s passion, death, and
resurrection, and the Spirit’s renewal. And
in baptism, all that the Son has is given to us as a free gift, including His
very righteousness.

Let
us thank God for our earthly parents, and especially on this day for the
mothers who gave us life by giving birth to us.
And let us especially thank God for our new birth by water and the
Spirit, for our mother who gives eternal life to us by giving birth to us as Christians,
for she “gives birth to you and bears you through the Word,” bringing us to the
Son who has saved us by His blood and mercy. And let us thank God and rejoice with all the
saints and angels in heaven for today’s heavenly adoption of Ethan.

“With
a voice of singing, declare, proclaim this, utter it to the ends of the earth. Alleluia.
The Lord has redeemed His servant. Alleluia!”
Amen.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Hison
the sickness of sinto the next - and d w liars and sons of the devil, tament, a
bloodye people on In the name of the
Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

Sunday, May 03, 2015

Sometimes
after a tragedy or an illness, a person has to learn how to function all over
again. Sometimes people need to relearn
how to walk, to talk, to read, to play music, to drive a car as if they never
knew how to do these things before. Sometimes
a person has to re-learn who he is, who his family members are, and what it
means to be a human being.

The
greatest tragedy in the history of humanity happened ironically in the Garden
of Eden. When our first parents rebelled
against their loving Creator – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – they
alienated themselves, not just from the wonderful Garden, but also from God and
from their own humanity itself. We
forgot what it meant to be truly human.

No
more would we be perfect physical, psychological, and spiritual beings in
perfect communion with one another, with nature, and with the eternal God. The Fall was a cosmic tragedy that changed all
of our existence in a millisecond.

And
we have been learning how to be human ever since.

God
had to reacquaint mankind with Himself (God) and with himself (man). God had to send prophets with the Word of God
so that man might relearn how to be human, to fill in the missing collective
memories of his past, to make baby steps toward a reconstruction of life in
perfect communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and to move toward a
restoration of our perfect, eternal state.

The people of God had to relearn about the holiness of God, that He is not a
stone idol or a created thing, not a force of nature or a mythological hybrid
between a man and a beast. The people of
God had to relearn about sin and death, about atonement and forgiveness, about
eternal life and the covenants and promises of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit.

God
provided the rainbow as a reminder of His mercy, the Temple as a reminder of
the price of sin, and the priesthood to pave the way for our Great High Priest
to come. God provided prophecies to
point us to the Lord’s coming in the flesh among us, and of what true humanity
was and was to come.

And
at the fullness of time, we were taught what it was to be truly human by the
only perfect Man among all humanity, Jesus Christ. Jesus taught us that God is “our Father who
art in heaven,” that He is perfect and expects us to be perfect, that He is
merciful, and gives us His righteousness as a free gift, and He Himself, the
Son of God, laid down His life on the cross to undo the damage that we have
done ever since Eden. He rose from the
dead to teach us that death is unnatural, and that it is overcome by love, by
His blood, and by the will of the Father.

But
we still had more to learn, even after the Lord’s resurrection.

This
is what Jesus means by saying: “It is to your advantage that I go away.” For God was not done revealing Himself to us,
re-teaching us what we tragically forgot at the Fall. For the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity
had yet to come and dwell with His Church, to guide us into all truth. This is the “Helper,” the παράκλητος (“parakletos”),
which can also be understood as “advocate,” “comforter,” “guide,” “consoler”
and “intercessor.” We know Him as the
Holy Spirit. He is equal in glory and co-eternal
in majesty with the Father and the Son, uncreated, infinite, eternal, and
almighty. He is “of the Father and of
the Son, neither made nor created nor begotten, but proceeding.” He is indeed to be worshipped.

He is neither a “she” nor an “it.” He is
not an impersonal force of the universe. He is God Almighty, and our Lord Jesus Christ
has begun to reacquaint mankind with Him in this Word that He speaks to us anew
in the Holy Gospel.

The Holy Spirit has much to teach us, and promises to dwell in us as fleshly
temples, even as He has “called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His
gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.” Dear friends, indeed, “In the same way He
calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth,
and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.”

In the Church, “He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all
believers,” thus restoring to us our bygone innocence and our paradise lost. “On the Last Day He will raise me and all the
dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ. This is most certainly true.”

This
is the work of our Helper, the Holy Spirit, who came at Pentecost, tearing down
the linguistic walls between men (which began at Babel) and shattering the
self-imposed boundary between mankind and God (which began at Eden).

Our
Lord taught us what it meant to be truly human, in His life, preaching,
teaching, and most of all, in His supreme act of love on the cross and in His
glorious resurrection from the dead at the tomb. And the expression, “God isn’t finished with
me yet” was most certainly true as our Lord Jesus Christ promised yet another
revelation of God, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, whom He promised would
be sent to us.

He
came to “convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” These are all things that we had lost touch with
in our universal human amnesia concerning the God who created us, redeems us,
and sanctifies us. And our Lord had much
more to say, but we could not bear them at that time. As our Lord said, “When the Spirit of Truth
comes, He will guide you into all the truth, for He will not speak on His own
authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the
things that are to come.”

Dear
friends, our Father is merciful! He has
created each one of us; He has seen to it that each one of us has received the
Word and promise of redemption in Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit in
Holy Baptism, and He continues to come to us in the Word of Absolution, in the
Gospel, and in the ongoing feast of the Holy Supper. He has enlightened us to receive this promise
and given us the gift of faith in His Word. We poor miserable sinners, now forgiven
sinners, are once more in communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Because
of the Father’s love begotten in the Son, and the sending of the Holy Spirit, “who
proceeds from the Father and the Son,” we are able to relearn who God is, who
our brothers and sisters in Christ are, and what it means to be a human being,
to be truly human as we were meant to be, and to live forever in Christ’s
kingdom, “and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and
blessedness,” now and forevermore. “This
is most certainly true.” Amen.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Hison
the sickness of sinto the next - and d w liars and sons of the devil, tament, a
bloodye people on In the name of the
Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

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Why Father Hollywood?

While serving in a previous ministerial call, I had to moonlight at the local Hollywood Video to pay for health insurance for the family. It took one of my coworkers a couple weeks before she stopped addressing me as "Father" and started using my first name.
It was a fun job. My co-workers were the best. I got free rentals too. You can click here to see a picture. Now you know the rest of the story...